Community Food Security

Spokane is participating in Sustainable September. I guess that means we've come a long way. One of the tracks of events has to do with local food. Being part of the committee has allowed me to meet some interesting new people and get to know better some people I had merely met once or twice.

One of the events of the food track is going to be a dinner at a Green Bluff farm next week. I am particularly excited about it because it is about ethics and food and I am going to be one of the speakers. I had planned only on blogging about this after the event, but it has been a while since I have written (I'll say more about that another time). And, well, we're trying to sell a few more tickets for the event.

The idea with Sustainable September is that communities come together around events that highlight the different aspects of sustainability in their own community. For Spokane, local food is one of these aspects that is becoming a lot more important as we realize the great benefits our local community can share and contribute when it comes to what one eats and what gets grown in our own area.

That's the focus of my talk -- Community Food Security. A little preview to pique your interest--food security has been the dominant way that those in international development circles have been talking about hunger for decades now. As the concept worked its way into the American discussion of domestic hunger, it shifted to be more about nutrition than starvation. And the idea of communities being food secure started to come to the fore. There has been a lot of debate about what that might mean--for a community to be food secure. For individuals we look at the ability of a person to have reliable access to healthy food to support an active lifestyle for 21 meals a week. But for a community that definition doesn't quite work. There are other assumptions at play.

At the brief presentation next week (and I promise it will be brief) we'll discuss what it might mean for Spokane to be food secure and how that might require some work and changes to our local food policy and to personal choices about food.

One choice that is a good one would be to join us at Trezzi farms on Thursday the 9th for a wonderful meal, a little thought provoking conversation, and some beautiful scenery!